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April 13, 2012

Microsoft Wins Its Largest-ever Cloud Computing Customer

by editor

Microsoft announced on Thursday that it had won its largest-ever cloud computing customer, having secured a deal to provide services to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the governing body for technical education in India.

The software giant said it would provide its [email protected] communication and collaboration software to more than 10,000 technical colleges and institutes throughout India to help expand access to high-quality technical education.

The cloud services, which Microsoft is providing for free as part of its education initiative, include email, Office Web applications, video chat, storage and instant messaging to allow AICTE´s 7 million students and half a million teachers to interact and share content for work, social networking and collaborative research projects.

“Microsoft´s cloud platform will make for a truly progressive ecosystem and contribute to the country´s technical education by providing a better communication and collaboration platform for institutes and students,” said AICTE chairman Dr. S. S. Mantha.

Microsoft´s cloud computing services includes software the company hosts on behalf of clients, and delivers over the Internet. For users, cloud computing offers simplicity and lower costs because there is no need to spend time and money on installing software and managing servers.

AICTE´s goal is to have [email protected] function as a social networking site linked to its main portal.

"This application ([email protected]) along with social networking will provide immense opportunities to students to interact and work with other projects," Mantha said.

Implementation of [email protected] is already underway, with the deployment set to be completed by mid-June, Microsoft said.

AICTE has additional plans to deploy Microsoft Office 365 for education when it becomes available later this year.